PROGRESS WILLIAM HOGARTH YINKA SHONIBARE MBE GRAYSON PERRY DAVID HOCKNEY JESSIE BRENNAN William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, plate 3 (detail), 1735. © Gerald Coke Handel Foundation PROGRESS William Hogarth (1697-1764) is often described as an ‘artist’s artist’. Since his artistic heyday in the mid- eighteenth century his work and his manner of working have inspired generations of creative people. A Rake’s Progress, Hogarth’s series of eight paintings (now in the Sir John Soane’s Museum), and subsequent etchings have provided a particularly rich resource for artists. The work’s heady combination of youth, money, lust and the city, coupled with Hogarth’s expert graphic technique, his precise storytelling, his wit, and unrelenting social critique, have kept this modern moral tale vivid and meaningful. From the moralising Victorian painter William Powell William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, plate 2 (detail), 1735. © Gerald Coke Handel Foundation Frith, to the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, to the American poet WH Auden, Hogarth’s Rake has provided a fertile feeding ground for artists working in many fields. On the 250th anniversary of his death, Hogarth’s work remains as relevant and inspirational as it was in 1735 The position of Curator: Exhibitions is supported by the Pilgrim Trust when the etchings were first published. This exhibition and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art focuses on visual artists and presents contemporary responses to the work by three major British artists: David Hockney, Grayson Perry and Yinka Shonibare Champagne Gosset Brut Excellence MBE. A new work from Jessie Brennan has been specially kindly provided by McKinley Vintners commissioned for the exhibition. The prints are arranged from top row (left to right, plates 1 – 3), FIRST FLOOR bottom row (left to right, plates 4 – 8) WILLIAM HOGARTH Plate 1: The Heir Plate 6: The Gambling Den Having received his inheritance, Tom is being measured for a new suit Set in White’s Club, Soho, Tom has now gambled away his second A Rake’s Progress, 1735 of clothes. He attempts to pay off his sweetheart, Sarah Young, whose fortune. Kneeling on the floor, cursing his luck, Tom and the other Etching and engraving bulging stomach and the ring she holds show that Tom has seduced gamblers – who include a highwayman, a clergyman and an aristocrat The Garrick Club, London her with the promise of marriage. – are oblivious to the fact that the room is on fire; a prophecy of Tom’s downfall. Plate 2: The Levée William Hogarth, an active Governor of the Foundling Hospital, was Aping the manners of the aristocracy, Tom is holding court at a Plate 7: The Prison a painter, engraver and entrepreneur who was passionate about the morning levée. Assorted visitors proffer their trades, including a Incarcerated in the Fleet Prison for debtors, Tom shows the first signs rights of artists and about promoting British talent. He burst onto dancing master, a landscape gardener and a fencing master. Hogarth of mental illness. The rejected script of a play he has written lies on London’s artistic scene in the first half of the eighteenth century, mocks Tom’s attempts to acquire taste through money. the floor. His wife scolds him as Sarah, her child pulling at her skirts, creating a new form of narrative painting with his modern moral tales. faints at the desperation of the scene before her. Published as a set of engravings in 1735, A Rake’s Progress follows the Plate 3: The Tavern rise and fall of young heir and spendthrift Tom Rakewell. On inheriting In Covent Garden’s Rose Tavern Tom is slumped in a drunken stupor. Plate 8: Bedlam his miserly father’s fortune, Tom embraces a world of foppery and While one prostitute steals his watch, another is undressing. She is Tom has descended into madness and is now in Bethlem Hospital, pretension, descending into a spiral of debauchery and debt, which about to perform an erotic routine on the reflective platter carried by known as ‘Bedlam’. Surrounded by other delusional figures and leads him to prison and eventually, the madhouse. The series is an the porter. robbed of his dignity, he is nursed by the ever-faithful Sarah and unflinching portrayal of the corruption, hypocrisy, vice and occasional observed by two fashionable ladies. Visiting the Hospital was a virtue of eighteenth-century London, presented with Hogarth’s typical Plate 4: The Arrest popular pursuit in Georgian London. wit and eye for detail. Tom is heavily in debt and, on the way to a party at St James’ Palace on Queen Caroline’s birthday, he is arrested. Sarah Young, now working as a milliner, steps in to save him. Plate 5: The Marriage Having spent his first fortune, Tom is acquiring a second by marrying a rich old woman. The ceremony takes places in the shabby interior of St Marylebone’s Church, known for holding clandestine weddings. In the background Sarah, now holding her child, is prevented from entering. William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, plate 6 (detail), 1735. © Gerald Coke Handel Foundation LOWER GROUND FLOOR 3. The Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close ‘I love the way his [Hogarth’s] paintings GRAYSON PERRY 4. The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal of eighteenth century life galvanise every Moving between what Perry calls ‘two tribes of middle class taste’, The Vanity of Small Differences, 2012 Tim turns his back on the modern utopia offered by King’s Hill, a detail, every gesture, every costume, into Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry pristine housing estate, where carefully selected aspirational products a portrait of a class, a place, and a time.’ Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London help residents assert their middle class credentials. Instead, Tim and his girlfriend move in with the second tribe – where cultural capital GRAYSON PERRY The tapestries are shown clockwise from the left as you enter the room sits at the heart of taste and taste asserts an individual’s authenticity. The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six tapestries charting the In tapestry 4, the scene is full of the trappings of ‘middle class’ taste, journey of Perry’s protagonist Tim Rakewell. Perry follows Hogarth’s Perry’s epitome of which, the cafetière, takes centre stage. The tablet structure of a progress, using the tapestries as a means to explore on the table shows that Tim, now a father, has sold his company to issues and ideas of class and taste in Britain today. Inspired by the Virgin for a fortune. people, incidents, places and objects Perry discovered while making his Channel Four documentary series All in the Best Possible Taste, 5. The Upper Class at Bay Perry literally and metaphorically weaves them into his narrative. In 6. #Lamentation addition to taking inspiration from Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, Perry’s Tim has joined the upper classes. In tapestry 5 the upper classes are tapestries include Biblical references and compositional devices under attack, torn apart by the dogs of inheritance tax, social change borrowed from religious paintings. and fuel bills. Tim and his wife’s enjoyment of their mansion is marred 2003 Turner Prize-winner Grayson Perry (b. 1960) by protestors demanding he pay sufficient tax. As in Hogarth’s work, works with traditional media such as ceramics and 1. The Adoration of the Cage Fighters tapestry 6 sees the Rake’s demise. While showing off his Ferrari to tapestry and is interested in how each category of 2. The Agony in the Car Park his new wife Amber (as the pages of Hello magazine relate) Tim has object accrues intellectual and emotional baggage crashed the car. Like Hogarth’s hero, Tim lies stripped of his dignity, Focusing on ‘working class taste’, these tapestries are inspired by over time. Perry delivered the BBC Reith lectures as well as his life, surrounded by the trappings of a mega-rich celebrity Perry’s visit to Sunderland and reference a car rally, a night out at in 2013, a year after his critically acclaimed Tomb lifestyle. In the background onlookers tweet the carnage – their ‘Heppies’ social club and the local homes he visited. The first is set of the Unknown Craftsman exhibition at the British Twitter hashtag referenced in the title. in ‘granny’s front room’. Tim is depicted as a baby, held by his young Museum. He is the Foundling Museum’s 2010 mother whose words ‘I could have gone to Uni…’ begin the story. Hogarth Foundling Fellow. In the second, Tim covers his ears as a nightclub singer belts out an emotional ballad. Behind, the crane alludes to the nostalgia felt for the heavy industry that once bound the town together, while all Grayson Perry, The Vanity of Small Differences, The Annunciation around are examples of ‘working class’ pastimes from allotments to of the Virgin Deal (detail), 2012. Courtesy the artist and Victoria accessorising cars. Miro Gallery, London ©The artist GROUND FLOOR remains absent in Brennan’s work, although she includes traces of ‘A Rake’s Progress had (and still has) JESSIE BRENNAN human habitation such as washing on a line. The four titles mimic key phrases from the regeneration project’s compulsory purchase order the ability to confront what people’s A Fall of Ordinariness and Light, 2014 issued by Tower Hamlets, juxtaposing the project’s positive language ideals of progress are.’ Graphite on paper, framed in aluminium with images of downfall. JESSIE BRENNAN From left to right: In 2014, Jessie Brennan was commissioned by the Foundling Museum 1: The Order Land to make a new work in response to Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress.